He’s a great patriot, but he’s rough and tough on men who shirk their duty.

James Lincoln Collier -- My Brother Sam is Dead

They "played off" (shirked) or played sick when battle impended.

James M. McPherson -- What They Fought For - 1861-1865

…name.He cannot wicket-keep at all,He’s frightened of a cricket ball.He reads indoors for hours and hours,He knows the names of beastly flowers.He says his French just like MossooA beastly stuck-up thing to doHe won’t keep cave, shirks his turnAnd says he came to school to learn! He won’t play football, says it hurts;He wouldn’t fight with Paley Terts;He couldn’t whistle if he tried,And when we laughed at him he cried!Now, Wigsby Minor says that ParrIs only…

Edith Nesbit -- The Railway Children

I was right on him before I could shirk.

Mark Twain -- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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It was perhaps not more dangerous than shirking an evening at the Centre.

George Orwell -- 1984

The next time, and God grant there isn’t a next time, I will not shirk my duty to her.

Rudolfo Anaya -- Bless Me, Ultima

He did his work in the same slow obstinate way as he had done it in Jones’s time, never shirking and never volunteering for extra work either.

"Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and get the chest," he cried.

Robert Louis Stevenson -- Treasure Island

You have always some excuse or another for shirking work.

James Joyce -- Dubliners

You’re still shirking it.

Michael Crichton -- Jurassic Park

He had seen lone dwarves face an entire group of Kull without shirking.

Christopher Paolini -- Eldest

It is probably some unpleasantness and some purple of this sort which the first man is desirous of shirking.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Chapter 17 At seven o’clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to wash his cell—a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most of the prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells became so filthy that the guards interposed.

Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle

But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain.

Ralph Ellison -- Invisible Man

He came between him and the shirks he should have punished.

Jack London -- The Call of the Wild

A pause — in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

The minute after a step traversed the hall; the open house was too tempting for Heathcliff to resist walking in: most likely he supposed that I was inclined to shirk my promise, and so resolved to trust to his own audacity.

Emily Bronte -- Wuthering Heights

Newspapers shirk notoriously their editorial responsibilities and print what they think their readers want.

John Howard Griffin -- Black Like Me

The immensely popular Ahmad Zahir had revolutionized Afghan music and outraged the purists by adding electric guitars, drums, and horns to the traditional tabla and harmonium; on stage or at parties, he shirked the austere and nearly morose stance of older singers and actually smiled when he sang—sometimes even at women.

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

And whenever she found Carreen on her knees when she should have been taking an afternoon nap or doing the mending, she felt that Carreen was shirking her share of the burdens.

Margaret Mitchell -- Gone with the Wind

And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty.

H.G. Wells -- The Time Machine

It is not true, as Akhilleus charges, that Agamemnon shirks battle; he can fight well, but is subject to repeated moods of doubt and vacillation.

Homer -- The Iliad

You’ve had a long day — sorry, I know that doesn’t begin to cover it — but that doesn’t mean that you can shirk your responsibilities.

Stephenie Meyer -- Eclipse

Instead of serving your masters faithfully, which is pleasing in the sight of your heavenly Master, you are idle, and shirk your work.

Harriet Jacobs -- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead.

Mark Twain -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Just because you find your task distasteful is no reason to shirk it.

Christopher Paolini -- Brisingr

Not long after Fischer reached Kruse and began the troublesome descent to Base Camp, they encountered Boukreev at the top of the Icefall, ascending alone, and Fischer harshly reprimanded the guide for shirking his responsibilities.

Jon Krakauer -- Into Thin Air

"Yes, looking at the sky, I thought that the dome that I see is not a deception, and then I thought something, I shirked facing something," he mused.

Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina

It’s pretty beastly, but it’s no use shirking facts.

Agatha Christie -- The ABC Murders

Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming.

George Eliot -- Silas Marner

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

Henry David Thoreau -- Walden

The gallant combatant came well primed by his master the duke as to how he was to bear himself against the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha; being warned that he must on no account slay him, but strive to shirk the first encounter so as to avoid the risk of killing him, as he was sure to do if he met him full tilt.

Miguel de Cervantes -- Don Quixote

Byron believed that there was not even enough left of him to do a good, shrewd job of shirking.

William Faulkner -- Light in August

She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have his own tea every day.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- Crime and Punishment

She shirked it with the suddenness of the weak Apostle at the accusation, "Thy speech bewrayeth thee!"

Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge

Miss Brinklow would never shirk a conclusion, even a wrong one.

James Hilton -- Lost Horizon

Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could.

Jane Austen -- Northanger Abbey

Then the sleepless Boots went shirking round from door to door, gathering up at each the Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside.

William Makepeace Thackeray -- Vanity Fair

Now, if you take into account that all this was to be worked out by a set of lazy, twaddling, shiftless laborers, who had grown up, all their lives, in the absence of every possible motive to learn how to do anything but ’shirk,’ as you Vermonters say, and you’ll see that there might naturally be, on his plantation, a great many things that looked horrible and distressing to a sensitive child, like me.

Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Responsibility is a very awful thing, and I’ve no use for the man who shirks it.

E.M. Forster -- A Passage to India

PRAISE-SINGER The gourd you bear is not for shirking.

Wole Soyinka -- Death and the King’s Horseman

We have seen with what irritation he shirked those little duties which no longer contained any amusement of satisfaction for him, and the open snarls with which, more recently, he resented her irritating goads.